Lena and Leander are playing together in the woods. The boy wants to impress the girl by throwing stones to knock apples off the trees. Suddenly Lena finds a dead bird under one of the tress and scolds Leander. Her friend tries to calm her: “My father told me that they lie down and go to sleep. Then a princess comes and kisses them, and they awaken and twitter”. The girl is frightened that she might never awaken, and resolves never to go to sleep again. Neither her parents nor the doctors they summon can make her change her mind. At length her friend Leander sets out to look for a suitable sleeping-potion, and travels all over the world with Lena. They have many adventures, get lost, meet weird characters and in the end arrive back in their home village with the help of the moon. But nothing is as it was before …

Opera for a young public has become well established at Deutsche Oper am Rhein thanks to four important major productions with more than thirty thousand tickets sold in Düsseldorf and Duisburg, and now for the first time a major children’s opera was commissioned specially for the 2013-14 season. This “girl who would not sleep” marks the start of a new co-operation of Deutsche Oper am Rhein with the theatres of Dortmund and Bonn, that is to be extended with further commissioned works later.

The composer is Marius Felix Lange from Berlin, whose “Snow White” had its very successful world première at the Cologne opera in 2011. The libretto was written by the writer and illustrator of children’s books Martin Baltscheit from Düsseldorf, who has won several awards, including the German Youth Theatre Prize in 2010 and the German Youth Literature Prize in 2011. For the staging, theatre and film director Johannes Schmid was engaged, whose “Wintertochter” was recently awarded the “Golden Lola” of the German Film Prize of 2012 for the best children’s film.

***Marius Felix Lange
VOM MÄDCHEN, DAS NICHT SCHLAFEN WOLLTE

A family opera
Libretto by Martin Baltscheit
Commissioned work for Deutsche Oper am Rhein

***
A co-operation of Deutsche Oper am Rhein with Theater Dortmund and Theater Bonn in the context of "Junge Opern Rhein-Ruhr“ under the patronage of Ute Schäfer, minister of Family Affairs, Children, Youth, Culture and Sports of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia